Skype under Fedora-10

[Veli-Pekka Kestilä]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Veli-Pekka Kestilä wrote:
>   
>> That feature actually is one which is missing from sip, if someone would
>> make opensource voip-solution which would be secure and use p2p as
>> transport we could maybe see real alternative to skype. Truth is that
>> there is a lot of computers which cannot act as a server and no-one will
>> want to host voip server for free (in large scale) so that two of these
>> behind nat computers could talk with eachother.
>>     
>
> That's what STUN is for.
>   
And it really isn't what is needed you will see when reading the spec 
and thinking of two isp's (companies,schools, etc.) doing large scale 
nat. But do what you like. Insist that current software does the job and 
complain how no one is switching away from skype.

The thing is that skype works quite reliably because of the agreement 
that when you use it connections of other people can route through your 
bandwith. I have managed to call trough it back to Finland in remote 
places like Urumuqi and being able to talk even surfing web had 
horrendous latency and speed issues. Granted there was probably some 
furius person listening it in Beijing who couldn't understand a word 
because I talked Finnish. (but that is expected when you make phone 
calls from country with totalitarian goverment)

Then with normal sip it would have been even more easy as they can 
intercept the packets and listen in to the conversation if I could have 
been able to connect at all. With most probable outcome being that 
latency of direct Urumuqi - Finland link would have killed the ability 
to hold meaningfull conversation. That's why you may need 3rd party or 
4th party thru which you can get low latency link between two places.

-vpk